Face of the LIB: Dennis Rödder

When did you realise that you would become a full-time biologist?

That was actually clear very, very early on in my life: as a child, I spent a lot of time in nature and studied a wide variety of animal groups. I also came into contact with the first specialist associations for amphibians and reptiles very early on because I was a guest at various lecture evenings and was then drawn further and further into the cosmos of biology. I also did my first internships at the Museum Koenig Bonn before I left school.

Which aspect of your day-to-day work is your highlight?

Firstly, the collection itself and secondly, my interaction with the collection, colleagues and students in research and teaching. It is precisely this diversity and the fact that everything is interconnected that inspires me in my work at the LIB. I also regularly receive enquiries from authorities, which then lead me to new research questions. This brings me full circle back to the students, as they then work on some of our tasks as Master's theses, for example, which I supervise. In terms of my research, I value the interactions with colleagues and students, in which we then develop questions for studies together. It's always exciting to come up with results that nobody really expected beforehand. We accompany our doctoral students over such a long period of time, sometimes over ten years, and it's great to see how they - and our joint research - continue to develop.

What does nature mean to you personally?

It's hard to narrow it down to one feeling, because for me it's more than the sum of its parts. For me, nature doesn't just mean that we have a huge catalogue of species around us, but what fascinates me above all is how everything is interconnected and interdependent. It is this complexity that is actually impossible to imagine and difficult to visualise when you think about how many levels the whole thing is connected on. How stable it can be on the one hand, but how fragile it is on the other when certain disturbances occur.

Where is your favourite place in nature?

There are several. In 2005 I was on a museum course in Brazil. It was actually about ornithology, but I always spent the evenings looking after the amphibians and reptiles. And the exciting thing was that we were in a small guest house with a few ponds and new species appeared every evening, always new amphibian species. A year later, I returned there for my dissertation. I identified a total of 109 different species in just one urban area - a world record. That was extreme, because nowhere else in the world are there so many amphibian species in such a small area. I have now transferred the whole thing into my courses: once a year we go on an excursion to the Red Sea, go diving and snorkelling, carry out behavioural experiments and get to know the habitat around the coral reef there better. We always find new species here every day - no matter how often we go in. I just came back a fortnight ago and this is the eighth time we've been there. On the very first day, we saw species that we had never seen before. And it is precisely this complexity that shows how dynamic it is, how many species there are and how many interdependencies there are between them. And that's what I'm trying to convey now.

Crabs, fish, butterflies: Who has their own personal affection and why?

Hm, difficult. For me, it's not specific species that come to mind, but rather their adaptations to their habitats that fascinate me. For example, we see a frog sitting in a pond and apparently that's it. If you look a little more closely, you can recognise some very crazy lifestyles or totally diverse reproduction cycles. And I think this diversity is actually the most exciting thing about it, so that each species, even if it appears to be quite normal and perhaps common at first, then shows very, very unique behaviours that make it special. The researcher in me then wants to know: In which habitats can they occur? How are the lifestyles and behaviour coordinated? For example, there is a frog in South America that lives in ant nests. Normally, any other species would be eaten right there. But it has chemical mimicry that masks it so that the ants don't even notice it. It is precisely these forms of adaptation that I find so exciting.

How do you explain the concept of biodiversity to children?

It's a very complex, sometimes somewhat unwieldy term. That's why I try to express it figuratively: When we walk across a meadow in summer, we see many, many individual species. But if you look in detail, you could also find many, many relationships. You find a spider that eats an insect. Then a bird that eats the spider. You find all these interrelationships that you actually have right on your doorstep and all of this together is biodiversity. So it really is more than just the sum of the individual species, it also includes all these networks, these dependencies, these temporal changes and dynamics.

What do you want people to associate with the LIB in ten years' time?

On the one hand, as a contact point for all questions relating to nature, ecosystems and biodiversity, but also as a provider of solutions. As an institution that stands up for the main problems we currently have - insect mortality, general loss of biodiversity, fragmentation of areas. I hope that we can actually offer regional solutions here and lay the foundations for politicians to make improvements.

What do you see as the biggest challenge in the field of environmental protection?

Across Europe, it would essentially be to identify key areas so that habitat connectivity can still be maintained to some extent. Improving microstructures, i.e. what politicians call green and blue infrastructures. We have already started with flower strips or hedgerow structures on fields, for example. There just needs to be a lot more research into how effective this actually is and how it needs to be designed so that it works for as many species as possible. What's more, we can all do our bit in our own gardens, for example: not removing an untidy corner or creating a pollinator bed is almost enough to make a difference to your own farmland. Individually, it may only have a small impact, but in total it has a big leverage effect.

What advice would you give to young biologists at the start of their careers?

The very first thing I always ask is: Where do they actually want to go? What is their ultimate goal? Most of them want to start tomorrow with a Bachelor's or Master's thesis and the subject doesn't really seem to matter. I always say very clearly: "No, it doesn't really matter." Maybe it does for the Master's thesis, but what happens afterwards? What course does the research set for the students? Unfortunately, only a few have a longer-term plan when they decide on this career path. However, this is very important in order to embark on this difficult career path and become a biologist.

Which LIB topics have you already been able to apply in your private life?

For example, in my garden: about five years ago, we unfortunately had to remove bamboo and virtually nothing was left of our garden. Even in a field next door, it had sprouted shoots up to 14 metres long. Now we are trying to turn it into an oasis of biodiversity. I've now planted almost 10,000 flower bulbs in an area of around 13 x 10 metres. Can you imagine what a quantity that is? This is my own big eco-experiment. How many species can I get together, how tightly packed can the whole thing be so that it still works? At the same time, seawater aquariums: I have owned seawater aquariums for twelve years now. Such an ecosystem on a small scale is of course totally exciting.

PD Dr Dennis Rödder has been head of the herpetology section at the Museum Koenig Bon since 2011 and supervises students at the University of Bonn as a private lecturer. After studying biology at the University of Bonn, he initially conducted research in the field of biogeography and ecological modelling as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Trier and as an adjunct assistant professor at Utah State University, USA. Since 2010, he has been a professor at the Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, Ilhéus, Brazil.